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Organic lemonade offers sweet, safe alternative to soda

Well, it's July, and it's not hot. For once. But that doesn't mean we can't still crave a summer thirst quencher.

This time of year, you might find yourself in the mood for a cold beer, some iced tea or a cold soda.

Unlike years past, surprisingly, fewer of us are turning to artificially sweetened, no-calorie soft drinks.

In March, The Wall Street Journal reported that, due to consumer concerns over the safety of aspartame — we know it as NutraSweet or Equal — Diet Coke sales slumped by 6.6 percent. When Coke counts its sales in the billions of gallons, that's a good-sized sea of dollars disappearing from its bottom line.

Coke isn't alone. Diet Pepsi is suffering the same fate: last year's sales dropped by 5.2 percent. What's going on?

It took folks a long time to start turning our collective backs on aspartame-sweetened soft drinks. Aspartame is one of the most controversial sweeteners on the market. The FDA and CDC say it's safe, but critics continue to complain about side effects.

Admittedly, I was a big Diet Coke fan until a couple of years ago. In fact, I purchased a Soda Club (now known as Soda Stream) soda maker back in 2005. I didn't care for Soda Club's diet cola syrups, so I bought five-gallon Diet Coke Bag-In-Box Fountain Syrup from Sam's Club and made my own at home.

That's no longer true.

Five years ago, I stopped buying Diet Coke syrup and all artificially sweetened soft drinks; I now use my soda maker to make club soda. You could do that, too, to make a refreshing, zero-calorie summer drink.

Don't have a Soda Stream? Several bottled spring waters come in flavors, like Mandarin orange, cherry, lemon or lime, with no sugar or artificial sweeteners, no calories and no artificial ingredients.

It took my palate a while to get used to an unsweetened carbonated drink. Now that I'm past it, though, I prefer the dry, clean flavor of either plain or lightly flavored carbonated spring water. Harmless and refreshing. Tough to beat.

I also make lemonade in the summer using whole lemons sweetened with organic stevia. Why organic?

Stevia is a leaf, so it's possible nonorganic stevia could be sprayed with pesticides to help produce better-looking and more prolific leaf growth.

I also use organic lemons to make sure they haven't been sprayed with chemical pesticides. How does a cold glass of my low-calorie lemonade taste? Sensational. And it beats the heat.

Give it a try.

Mauer's sugar-free organic Lemonade

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